"R'n'B" recommendations PLEASE!?

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rubberdingyrapids

Well-known member
true, i know hes not a R&B artist, but the half of the album i do like IS r&b, hence why i posted about it here. i didnt say he sounds like wyclef, he doesnt, merely that as far as rappers who do R&B/pop go, future is def in that tradition of wyclef, missy, mos def, etc etc.
 
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CrowleyHead

Well-known member
Not at all.

Missy is a R&B singer/songwriter who occasionally performs raps. Her closest contemporaries are something close to R. Kelly or Bobby Brown.

Wyclef is a rapper who later made a dive into singer/songwriter territory for musical legitimacy. His closest contemporary is Everlast.

Mos Def is mediocre at everything he does, but people give his moments their due. His closest contemporary is the bus-driver who was singing along to the radio while I went to get groceries three days ago.

Future is a rapper who raps with a melodic bent who takes a pop approach to primarily rap-based structure. R&B is not affiliated with his genre, which is something I'd label 'futuristic' based off one of his progenitors, Yung LA. (Others would label it shit like Auto-Goon, but that's dumb so whatever). He has sung hooks and flows that involve singing, but he is not crafting R&B and his production very rarely goes in the direction of R&B production of the current era, especially on his albums. In fact the most R&B tracks I've ever heard Future affiliated with have all been outside work (Specifically "Body Party" and "Loveee Song" where he isn't even the most overtly R&B-styled performer).

I just find the idea that Future should be labeled an R&B artist incredibly reductive... Not that R&B is a bit of slander, mind you, but the idea that rapping and singing are so automatically divorced from each other. And after all, the guy isn't Drake, peddling lukewarm rapping next to lukewarm R&B to provide perfect composite 'urban environment pop that still has a universality to it'... This is something different.
 
C

CrowleyHead

Well-known member
Spent last night talking with a female friend where I admitted that there were dozens of Chris Brown bangeurs.

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(Perfectly complimented by that one remix the LuckyMe crew would drop)

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If my memory's right, this one was actually meant for Britney Spears. The beat is peak Danja.
 
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rubberdingyrapids

Well-known member
CrowleyHead said:
Missy is a R&B singer/songwriter who occasionally performs raps. Her closest contemporaries are something close to R. Kelly or Bobby Brown.
Click to expand...

i dunno about occasionally. id say its pretty evenly split down the middle. it doesnt even matter where you want to put her, the fact is that shes one of the artists who really made the two genres blur in a way few artists did before. thats what made supa dupa fly so important at the time, and why so many hip hoppers didnt like her.

CrowleyHead said:
Wyclef is a rapper who later made a dive into singer/songwriter territory for musical legitimacy. His closest contemporary is Everlast.
Click to expand...

again, rapper-turnt-R&B-sanga, or vice versa, it doesnt really matter where they started. what matters is what they DID and where their music ended up. and they both did something pretty similiar to what future is doing now. or at least what hes being praised for now.

CrowleyHead said:
Future is a rapper who raps with a melodic bent who takes a pop approach to primarily rap-based structure. R&B is not affiliated with his genre, which is something I'd label 'futuristic' based off one of his progenitors, Yung LA. (Others would label it shit like Auto-Goon, but that's dumb so whatever). He has sung hooks and flows that involve singing, but he is not crafting R&B and his production very rarely goes in the direction of R&B production of the current era, especially on his albums. In fact the most R&B tracks I've ever heard Future affiliated with have all been outside work (Specifically "Body Party" and "Loveee Song" where he isn't even the most overtly R&B-styled performer).

I just find the idea that Future should be labeled an R&B artist incredibly reductive... Not that R&B is a bit of slander, mind you, but the idea that rapping and singing are so automatically divorced from each other. And after all, the guy isn't Drake, peddling lukewarm rapping next to lukewarm R&B to provide perfect composite 'urban environment pop that still has a universality to it'... This is something different.
Click to expand...

its quite peculiar how you are so opposed calling anything he does R&B (so i would wager you DO think it slanderous) but anyway, its pretty obvious, futures whole shtick is blurring hip hop and R&B (not like hes the only one of course). i be you (this could be edm-gone-R&B), special, blood sweat tears (this is actually the song that most reminds me of wyclef in that affectedly impassioned, ragged, almost-reggae delivery), side effects, ill be yours, the title song, how you can say these arent R&B or at least HEAVILY R&B laced is a bit odd. it doesnt matter whether you are placing them as false binaries to what drake does, future is no less grating than drake in his icky juxtapositions of obnoxiousness and confessional intimacy. but hes just as indebted to R&B. as far as it being futuristic or whatever (which id say is stretching things a tad but hey, loveee song sounded more futuristic than 90% of honest), young thug is sounding quite a bit more futuristic than honest right now...

chris brown is a cunt but hes made some good songs. albeit songs which reveal a slightly unsavoury appetite in his fans/the music-buying public/this generation in general for cuntish behaviour in modern pop music.
 
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Corpsey

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Look at Me Now is also undeniable.

Hey! I can actually contribute something new to this thread!

The new Trey Songz album is pretty good:



Though there are a few clunkers with hooks which nicks bits from Fugees/other hip-hop songs, though.
 
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CrowleyHead

Well-known member
rubberdingyrapids said:
its quite peculiar how you are so opposed calling anything he does R&B (so i would wager you DO think it slanderous) but anyway, its pretty obvious, futures whole shtick is blurring hip hop and R&B (not like hes the only one of course). i be you (this could be edm-gone-R&B), special, blood sweat tears (this is actually the song that most reminds me of wyclef in that affectedly impassioned, ragged, almost-reggae delivery), side effects, ill be yours, the title song, how you can say these arent R&B or at least HEAVILY R&B laced is a bit odd. it doesnt matter whether you are placing them as false binaries to what drake does, future is no less grating than drake in his icky juxtapositions of obnoxiousness and confessional intimacy. but hes just as indebted to R&B. as far as it being futuristic or whatever (which id say is stretching things a tad but hey, loveee song sounded more futuristic than 90% of honest), young thug is sounding quite a bit more futuristic than honest right now...
Click to expand...

I don't think R&B is slanderous as a comparative point, I think it's misleading, and it distracts from the innovative ancestry of Future. Let me try and explain this in a certain way...

When I say "Futuristic", this isn't a self-applied descriptor, it's something out of something Atlanta Rappers came up. It was this little niche of post-snap pre-"TRAP" rap called "Swag Rap". It was usually characterized by younger teen rappers or adults with higher voices (OJ The Juiceman, or J-Money AKA J-Futuristic who would brag about his 'futuristic' flow/style, hence the label)

I know this stuff wasn't a big deal on dissensus probably, but this was a mini-event in Atlanta of an entire generational push as now a lot of these acts who are present today, Thug, Future, Travis Porter, Rich Kidz are either second or third-wave 'futuristic' rappers who built a catalog. Thug is of course more futuristic to you identify with in the typical sonically challenging method, but Future is Thug's progenitor just as much as Wayne (quite literally too. When I first heard Future's early work when it was popping out, I kept thinking how much more solidly 'rapper'/'trapper' based it was compared to contemporaries.

Some examples:

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And a lot of these artists have R&B influences, sure. But they're not necessarily operating in the R&B formula. Rather what happened with a lot of these artists was a progression into a a post rap-pop, which is what happened with Future and a bunch of his peers. Part of this was also influenced by a large group of typically Haitian Atlanta citizens who use autotune, melody and songwriting to characterize their work. The comparisons you usually describe are either A) Outsiders to rap flirting with it to expand their sound or B) rappers who holistically abandon rap aside from maybe still relying on the production style affiliated with rap (though if memory serves right, by his second album, Wyclef's production was a lot of live-band 'real music' slop.). David Drake actually alluded to a lot of this in his Pitchfork review of Thug's ICFN3 tape, though that was before more of this wave finally broke out of Atlanta and on a national scale in a way that wasn't nearly as reductive and looked at them as novelty. He proposed that dancehall might be a rather subliminal influence on a lot of this stuff in the 'Haitianwave', and I definitely concur.

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I've already thrown a huge monkey wrench in the R&B thread, but I think it's entirely necessary that this gets recognized as it's own field, rather than simply being cheaply swept under "R&B".
 
C

CrowleyHead

Well-known member
Since I originally derailed the thread, I should be the one to restore it to glory. I love California right now.

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And I've put this in Dissensus before, but this is still such a perfect single

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C

CrowleyHead

Well-known member
Oh, Oh, and of course, Mustard on the bineat

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Corpsey

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Vulturing the ILX RNB thread right now (although I swear I didn't get 'Mascara' off them Dissenbruvs)

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They're calling this ratchet'n'b stuff ''R'n'Bass" over there (with their crazy ways). This is good, have to say I'm getting a bit bored of this type of RNB and Mustard in general actually by now. I mean, there are still brilliant songs coming out in this style and no doubt will be more but it's becoming such a standard style now there's bound to be a lot of cookie-cutter stuff.
 
Corpsey

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Much as I'd like Meek to decapitate Drake this week, I have to give Drake('s team of ghostwriters) credit for this tune:

JUNGLE

Bit late but better than never...

And here's an article in the NYT about The Weeknd's attempts at turning himself into the new Michael Jackson. Interesting stuff about an influential songwriter/producer called Max Martin (another Scandinavian) who has been behind a lot of the big acts of recent years:

That track came from the studio of Max Martin, the Swedish producer whose influence on 2000s pop is matchless — his guiding hand firmly behind the careers of Britney Spears, Kelly Clarkson and Katy Perry. He works with a large team of writers and producers out of a sprawling residential compound in West Hollywood that was once home to Frank Sinatra. Martin’s hit-*factory typically solicits little creative input from the talent, who show up when it’s time to sing. This process was alien to Tesfaye, who had always written his own lyrics and was unsure that he would be a good match for Grande’s good-girl gleam. When he saw the lyrics that were sent to him, he found them to be tepid. He rewrote his verse, recorded it and sent it back.

What could have been a contentious exchange was actually edifying for both parties: Martin liked Tesfaye’s changes and kept them; Tesfaye realized he could make sleek, accessible pop on his own terms. He asked Goldstein to secure Martin’s services for his next album. ‘‘If I’m gonna be the biggest in the world,’’ he told her, ‘‘I need a handful of songs like that.’’
 
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